Describe at least two more scenes involving math in your life that stand out as especially important or significant. Think in terms of scenes from your childhood, adolescence and adulthood.
One scene that comes to my mind comes from the first book I learned to read. The title of the book was "How many ways can you cut a pie". My mother read it to me A LOT because it was the only book I wanted to read. I think I liked the book because it was about math. More particularly, the book was about fractions. I thought that was funny; the first book I learned to read was about math.
Another scene that comes to my mind occurred when my brother lived with me. He used to have problems 8th grade algebra. At first, I couldn't understand why he was having problems. I felt like I was explaining everything so well. I then realized that he learns like me. He needs a model to constantly refer to to better understand mathematical concepts. We ended up making a tablet full of algebra concepts like adding/subtracting fractions and certain formulas. It made it easy once I realized that he needed something to refer to and that he needed a lot of foundational mathematical knowledge to better understand the work he had. He didn't have a good understanding of negative numbers in general and other things.
Wow. That's a great book, Gabriel. I love it even now, not only because it's about fractions, but also because it's about pie!
ReplyDeleteAnd this story of working with your brother really shows what kind of teacher you are, Gabriel. You took the time to listen, to try to understand how your brother learns and what he already understood, and worked with him to create tools to help his learning. Pretty incredible.